Yet another reason not to take your eyes off the prize

Seth's blog on adversity and the route to success came just at the right time today. Starting your own business isn't easy, especially when you have such specific ideals of what it will and won't be and when. Ideas that lead to genuine success are bound to be tricky to execute (this is also true of great marketing or great product).

The temptation would be to give in and start making compromises, as Seth says "Why bother? The thinking is that we can just pump some more oil or smile and gladhand our way to an acceptably happy outcome."

That was the phrase that did it for me though, "acceptably happy outcome"; nowhere in any of my planning and rationale did that phrase occur. Genius was conceived to reflect its name, to be outstanding, incredible, remarkable, original.

The same has to be true of all marketing and product development. People don't want to buy stuff they see as just "ok" or "acceptable", they want terrific value, great quality, unique features...

So next time you're tempted just to "make do", ask yourself what you set out to do in the first place and why. I'll bet it wasn't to produce something average.

3 ways to decide if a good idea isn't good enough

I came across a great post on HBR the other day focusing on killing off good ideas in order to concentrate your resources on a few that then come to fruition. I really liked this as an approach, perhaps because marketers are so often in a position of being idea rich and time poor, often inadvertently positioning themselves as ineffective as a result. (You've all worked with people like that - super creative types who never complete a project because they've got all wrapped up and excited by their next big idea).

So how do we decide which ideas to keep and throw our weight behind and those to let fall by the wayside?

Before I throw in my 2 pence worth, I want to make it clear that I know there are hundreds of possible ways of doing this and these are just my own, another opinion on the pile!

1) Does the idea align with your strategic objectives? Ideally all major projects should support the pillars of your annual strategy and move those lofty strategic aims forward towards a reality.
2) Can we put a dollar value on the benefit of executing the idea? I'm not saying that if we can't we shouldn't pursue it but I'd rather we could, as no idea that fits into this mould can really be a nice to have if the bottom line impact is significant.
3) Who would your team be? Again, you don't always want to avoid pursuing ideas that involve working with people who are likely to let you down and make your life more difficult. Sometimes it is unavoidable; yet I'd allow it to rule things out if confronted with a list of things with similar possible levels of benefit to the business.

The death of an idea

It is an accepted thing to refer to someone as an "ideas person". I was pondering this concept the other day, trying to establish whether it is actually a compliment or not. I reached the conclusion that it is only really a positive asset if people mean that you come up with and execute great ideas, execution being the key bit as an idea is only really truly great if it results in a successful outcome.

Why do ideas fail to become reality?

1) Lack of support from those whose help is needed to execute
2) Lack of commitment from the idea originator and/or team
3) The obstacles are allowed to become bigger than the idea
4) They weren't truly great in the first place - not enough point to motivate people to execute
5) Lack of understanding of either the objective or the route towards it

I'm sure there are many more but these are the ones that annoy me most...

The ethics of the piece

Last night as I left the office I walked past 3 girls of maybe 7 years old. They were talking about one of their mothers' friends who they had never met but was at this girl's home where they were all headed. Quite naturally they were pondering what she might be like; "perhaps she will be pretty with nice clothes" said one, "or ugly and single" giggled another.

I found it pretty depressing that these carefree young spirits had already established a link, consciously or not, between beauty, material wealth and your chance of landing a partner.

More disconcerting was that I then realised we marketers were entirely to blame. Whether directly or indirectly our message to women that you can buy happiness and success had managed to put a filter on the world view of these children.

As someone whose messages are directed at businesses, did I need to worry? Where do we draw the line between effective copy and pushing people's buttons? Where does using people's motivators become taking unfair advantage of insecurities that are perhaps caused by market factors beyond their control? (How many of us tacitly implied that our products or services would help our customer survive the recession?)

There are no clear rules, probably no real answers that make both commercial and ethical sense in equal part, but an interesting thought to puzzle next time you need a break from writing a communication strategy.